0916-15 New York Times Crossword Answers 16 Sep 15, Wednesday

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Fancy wheels, familiarly : BENZ
It is generally accepted that Karl Benz invented the internal combustion engine, although others were doing similar work around the same time. He certainly was awarded the first patent for an automobile, in 1886. His first automobile, the Patent-Motorwagen, couldn’t get up hills unaided so his wife Bertha Benz suggested the introduction of gears. Sure enough, the next model had two gears. Behind every successful man …

5. Speed-of-sound ratio : MACH
The Mach number of a moving object (like say an airplane) is it’s speed relative to the speed of sound. A plane travelling at Mach 2, for example, is moving at twice the speed of sound. The term “Mach” takes its name from the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach who published a groundbreaking paper in 1877 that even predicted the “sonic boom”.

15. Certain quatrain rhyme scheme : ABAA
A quatrain is a group of four lines of poetry. The most common quatrain schemes are AAAA, AABB and ABAB.

16. Hot winter quaff : COCOA
“Quaff” is both a verb and a noun. One quaffs (takes a hearty drink) of a quaff (a hearty drink).

20. “Welcome to the mall! Make sure you don’t ___” : MISS THE TARGET
Target Corporation was founded by George Draper Dayton in 1902 in Minneapolis, Minnesota as Dayton Dry Goods Company. Dayton developed into a department store, and the company opened up a discount store chain in 1962, calling it Target. Today Target is the second-largest discount retailer in the country, after Walmart.

24. Rocky road ingredient, for short : CHOC
The flavor of ice cream known as rocky road is made using chocolate ice cream mixed with nuts and marshmallows. The exact origin of the flavor seems to be disputed, but one story is that William Dreyer invented in 1929, chopping up walnuts and marshmallows with sewing scissors belonging to his wife.

25. Some inkjets : HPS
Inkjet is a very accurate and descriptive name for the type of printer. Printing is done by shooting fine jets of ink onto the page.

26. “The food court offers much more than just your typical ___” : SUBWAY FARE
The SUBWAY chain of fast food restaurants is the largest single-brand restaurant in the world. I’m a big fan of SUBWAY sandwiches, especially the toasted ones …

29. Young salamanders : EFTS
Salamanders are lizard-like amphibians found in all across the northern hemisphere. They are the only vertebrate animals that can regenerate lost limbs.

33. Vagabond : TRAMP
A “vagabond” is a person without a home who moves from place to place. The term derives from the Latin “vagabundus” meaning “wandering, strolling about”.

37. Style of New York’s Chrysler Building : ART DECO
The Chrysler Building in Manhattan is a magnificent Art Deco style structure that was opened in 1930. Standing at over 1,000 feet tall, it was the tallest building in the world for almost a year, until the Empire State Building was completed in 1931. The building was constructed for use of the Chrysler Corporation, but the company never owned it. The car manufacturer’s founder decided to pay for the Chrysler Building out if his personal wealth, so that he could pass it on to his children.

43. Bird in Genesis : DOVE
According to the Book of Genesis in the Bible, Noah sent out a dove from the ark after the Great Flood. He did so three times, to see if the flood waters were starting to recede. On the first occasion the dove returned without having found a place to alight. On the second occasion, the dove returned with an olive leaf, indicating that vegetation had started to grow again. On the third occasion, the dove did not return at all, indicating that the it had found a new home and had no need for the ark.

45. Home to Incan 19-Across : CUZCO
(19A. Archaeologist’s workplace : RUINS)
Cusco (also Cuzco) is a city in the southeast of Peru. Historically, Cusco was the historic capital of the Inca Empire.

46. E-tailer of homemade knickknacks : ETSY
Etsy.com is an e-commerce website where you can buy and sell the kind of items that you might find at a craft fair.

48. “Some people hate the next store, but I don’t ___” : MIND THE GAP
“Mind the Gap” is a very famous announcement made in several stations on the London Underground. The announcement is needed as there can be a large gap between the doorways of trains and the platform. This gap arises because the platforms of some stations are quite curved, while the train cars are of course straight.

The Gap is a San Francisco-based clothing retailer founded in 1969. The name “the Gap” was a homage to the popular sixties term “the generation gap”.

53. Silk Road desert : GOBI
The large desert in Asia called the Gobi lies in northern China and southern Mongolia. The Gobi desert is growing at an alarming rate, particularly towards the south. This “desertification” is caused by increased human activity. The Chinese government is trying to halt the desert’s progress by planting great swaths of new forest, the so called “Green Wall of China”.

The Silk Road was a network of trading routes that crossed North Africa and Asia, connecting Europe to West Asia. The routes get the name from the lucrative trade in silk from China.

54. Settings for “Grey’s Anatomy” and “House,” for short : ERS
“Gray’s Anatomy” is a very successful human anatomy textbook that was first published back in 1858 and is still in print today. The original text was written by English anatomist Henry Gray, who gave his name to the work. The TV medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy” is centered on the character Dr. Meredith Grey, but the show’s title is a nod to the title of the famous textbook.

I think that “House” is one of the best shows made by Fox television. It is fun for me to see English actor Hugh Laurie in the title role as coming from the other side of the Atlantic I have been watching him in various comedic roles for decades. Famously he played Bertie Wooster opposite Stephen Fry in P.G. Wodehouse’s “Jeeves & Wooster”, as well as one of the bumbling “bad guys” in “101 Dalmatians” (the version starring Glenn Close).

55. “I don’t really know the employees in the tech store anymore because there’s been a lot of ___” : APPLE TURNOVER
The technical support desk found in Apple Retail Stores is rather inventively called the Genius Bar. The certified support technicians are known as “Geniuses”. The trainees are called GYOs: Grow-Your-Own-Geniuses”.

60. Down Under dweller : KOALA
The koala bear really does look like a little bear, but it’s not even closely related. The koala is an arboreal marsupial and a herbivore, native to the east and south coasts of Australia. Koalas aren’t primates, and are one of the few mammals other than primates who have fingerprints. In fact, it can be very difficult to tell human fingerprints from koala fingerprints, even under an electron microscope. Male koalas are called “bucks”, females are “does”, and young koalas are “joeys”. I’m a little jealous of the koala, as it sleeps up to 20 hours a day …

61. Major source of online revenue : BANNER ADS
A banner ad is an advertisement that runs horizontally across the page.

65. Woman’s name that sounds like its first two letters : EVIE
“Evie” sounds like “EV”

68. Clarinetist’s need : REED
The clarinet is a lovely-sounding instrument, isn’t it? The name comes from the Italian word “clarino” meaning “trumpet” with the “-et” suffix indicating “small”.

69. Risqué, say : EDGY
“Risqué” is a French word, the past participle of the verb “to risk”. So in English we use “risqué” to mean “racy”, but in French it means “risky”.

Down
1. Email add-on : BCC
A blind carbon copy (bcc) is a copy of a document or message that is sent to someone without other recipients of the message knowing about that extra copy.

2. 1970s political cause, for short : ERA
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was written by the American suffragist leader, Alice Paul. Although Paul was successful in her campaign to get passage of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution (guaranteeing voting rights regardless of sex), her 1923 Equal Rights Amendment didn’t make it to the Senate floor until 1972. The amendment was passed by the Senate, and then headed to the state legislatures for the required ratification. 38 states had to approve the legislation for the amendment to be adopted, but only 35 states voted in favor before the deadline. So the amendment is still pending, although about half of the fifty states have adopted the ERA into their state constitutions.

3. “Psycho” character who is (spoiler alert!) actually a corpse : NORMA BATES
Norma Bates is a crucial character in the famous Hitchcock movie “Psycho”. Norma is Norman Bates’ mother, a woman who was cruel to her son as she was raising him. We hear Norma’s voice several times in the film in flashbacks, but we discover towards the end of the movie that she has in fact been a corpse right from the opening scene..

7. Bygone game show filmed in a moving vehicle : CASH CAB
“Cash Cab” is a fun TV game show that originated in the UK and is now shown all over the world, including here in North America. In the US version, contestants are picked up in a cab in New York City and asked questions during their ride.

8. ___-watch : HATE
“To hate-watch” a particular TV show is to watch it even though you actually nate its content.

11. Tobaccoless smoke, informally : E-CIG
An electronic cigarette (also called an “e-cigarette”) is a battery-powered device that resembles a real cigarette. The e-cigarette vaporizes a solution that contains nicotine, forming a vapor that resembles smoke. The vapor is inhaled, delivering the nicotine into the body. The assumption is that an e-cigarette is healthier than a regular cigarette as the inhaled vapor is less harmful than inhaled smoke. But, that may not be so …

12. What the fourth little piggy had : NONE

This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none,

And this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home.

13. Jet stream’s heading : EAST
Jet streams are narrow air currents high in the atmosphere that move very quickly around the earth. The major jet streams surrounding our planet move in a westerly direction.

23. Castle part : TURRET
A “turret” is a small tower, and a word coming to us from Latin via French. The French word is “tourette” meaning small “tour”, or “tower”.

27. Iraq war subj. : WMD
The first recorded use of the term “Weapon of Mass Destruction” (WMD) was in 1937. The words were used by Cosmo Gordon Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, in reference to the bombardment of Guernica in Spain during the Spanish Civil War by the German Luftwaffe. He said, “Who can think without horror of what another widespread war would mean, waged as it would be with all the new weapons of mass destruction?”

30. “Tales of the Jazz Age” writer : FITZGERALD
“Takes of the Jazz Age” is a 1922 collection of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The most famous take in the collection is “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”.

38. One of Santa’s reindeer : COMET
We get the names for Santa’s reindeer from the famous 1823 poem called “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, although we’ve modified a couple of the names over the years. The full list is:

– Dasher
– Dancer
– Prancer
– Vixen
– Comet
– Cupid
– Donder (originally “Dunder”, and now often “Donner”)
– Blitzen (originally “Blixem”)

Rudolph was added to the list by retailer Montgomery Ward, would you believe? The store commissioned Robert L. May to create a booklet that could be handed out to children around Christmas in 1939, and May introduced us to a new friend for Santa, namely Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

41. Calendar abbr. : TUE
Týr (sometimes “Tīw”, “Tius” or “Tio”) is the Norse god of single combat, victory and heroic glory. Our “Tuesday” is in fact “Tīw’s Day”.

49. One of the Wahlbergs : DONNIE
Donnie Wahlberg is a singer and actor. As a singer, Wahlberg is one of the founding members of the Boston band New Kids on the Block. As an actor, he stars alongside Tom Selleck in the TV cop show “Blue Bloods”. Donnie is the older brother of actor Mark Wahlberg.

55. “I Wanna Love You” singer, 2006 : AKON
Akon is a Senegalese American R&B and hip hop singer, who was born in St. Louis but lived much of his early life in Senegal. Akon is a stage name, and his real name is Aliaune Damala Bouga Time Bongo Puru Nacka Lu Lu Lu Badara Akon Thiam. Got that?

57. Savory spread : PATE
Pâté is a rich spreadable paste made up of a mixture of ground meat and fat, to which various vegetables, herbs and spices may be added. The most famous version of the paste is pâté de foie gras, made from the fattened livers of geese (“foie gras” means “fat liver” in French).

58. Transportation competitor of Lyft : UBER
Uber is a ridesharing service that was founded in 2009 and is based in San Francisco. The service is somewhat controversial and has been described as an illegal taxicab operation. Central to Uber’s service is the company’s mobile app, which can use the client’s GPS location to help find the nearest available ride. Uber’s main competitor is Lyft. ersonally, I love the service and only have had good experiences …

59. Old World language : ERSE
There are actually three Erse languages: Irish, Manx (spoken on the Isle of Man) and Scots Gaelic. In their own tongues, these would be Gaeilge (in Ireland), Gaelg (on the Isle of Man) and Gaidhlig (in Scotland).

63. 2015 Melissa McCarthy comedy : SPY
Melissa McCarthy is an actress and comedian who is perhaps best known on the small screen for playing Molly on the sitcom “Mike & Molly”, and on the big screen for playing the wild and wacky Megan Price in the 2011 comedy “Bridesmaids”. According to “Forbes”, McCarthy is the third-highest paid actress in 2014/2015, after Jennifer Lawrence and Scarlett Johansson.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Fancy wheels, familiarly : BENZ
5. Speed-of-sound ratio : MACH
9. Commotion : SCENE
14. Cornfield menace : CROW
15. Certain quatrain rhyme scheme : ABAA
16. Hot winter quaff : COCOA
17. Ladder climber : CAREERIST
19. Archaeologist’s workplace : RUINS
20. “Welcome to the mall! Make sure you don’t ___” : MISS THE TARGET
22. Letter that rhymes with 34-Across and 21-Down : ETA
24. Rocky road ingredient, for short : CHOC
25. Some inkjets : HPS
26. “The food court offers much more than just your typical ___” : SUBWAY FARE
29. Young salamanders : EFTS
33. Vagabond : TRAMP
34. See 22-Across : BETA
36. What’s a bit of a shock to a chemist? : ION
37. Style of New York’s Chrysler Building : ART DECO
40. Sequel : PART TWO
42. Souvenir shop purchase : TEE
43. Bird in Genesis : DOVE
45. Home to Incan 19-Across : CUZCO
46. E-tailer of homemade knickknacks : ETSY
48. “Some people hate the next store, but I don’t ___” : MIND THE GAP
51. Before, poetically : ERE
53. Silk Road desert : GOBI
54. Settings for “Grey’s Anatomy” and “House,” for short : ERS
55. “I don’t really know the employees in the tech store anymore because there’s been a lot of ___” : APPLE TURNOVER
60. Down Under dweller : KOALA
61. Major source of online revenue : BANNER ADS
64. Declined, with “out” : OPTED
65. Woman’s name that sounds like its first two letters : EVIE
66. Farm feed : SLOP
67. Down-and-out : NEEDY
68. Clarinetist’s need : REED
69. Risqué, say : EDGY

Down
1. Email add-on : BCC
2. 1970s political cause, for short : ERA
3. “Psycho” character who is (spoiler alert!) actually a corpse : NORMA BATES
4. Two, in German : ZWEI
5. Like a bog : MARSHY
6. Some : A BIT OF
7. Bygone game show filmed in a moving vehicle : CASH CAB
8. ___-watch : HATE
9. Quarrel : SCRAP
10. Soup or dessert : COURSE
11. Tobaccoless smoke, informally : E-CIG
12. What the fourth little piggy had : NONE
13. Jet stream’s heading : EAST
18. Got away : ESCAPED
21. See 22-Across : THETA
22. A lot of rich people? : ESTATE
23. Castle part : TURRET
27. Iraq war subj. : WMD
28. Gym unit : REP
30. “Tales of the Jazz Age” writer : FITZGERALD
31. Vehicle clearing a no-parking zone : TOW CAR
32. Pries : SNOOPS
35. Record holder : ARCHIVE
38. One of Santa’s reindeer : COMET
39. Egg: Prefix : OVI-
41. Calendar abbr. : TUE
44. Etch : ENGRAVE
47. Cried : YELLED
49. One of the Wahlbergs : DONNIE
50. Crashed into the side of : T-BONED
52. “Shall we?” : READY?
55. “I Wanna Love You” singer, 2006 : AKON
56. John or Paul, but not Ringo : POPE
57. Savory spread : PATE
58. Transportation competitor of Lyft : UBER
59. Old World language : ERSE
62. Pursue : DOG
63. 2015 Melissa McCarthy comedy : SPY

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